Friday, 22 February 2019

Political parties that participated in the 2018 July harmonised elections met yesterday and formed four thematic committees as the first step towards a national dialogue to the challenges facing the country. More than 20 parties attended the meeting, which was held at State House.Chairman of the National Peace and Reconciliation Commission (NPRC) Justice Selo Nare chaired the meeting.Yesterday’s meeting was a sequel to one that was held a fortnight ago, where the idea of forming the thematic committees was agreed on.Justice Nare told The Herald after the meeting that each political party seconded four members to each committee. “The whole point was to establish thematic committees,” he said.“The parties came up with four thematic committees. The first one is the committee on transitional framework to design the structure, composition, and operational modality for the dialogue.“The second was the committee on agenda-setting, to come up with the issues to constitute the agenda for the dialogue process.“The third committee will deal with the identification of the convenor and moderator of the dialogue. The fourth committee is the implementation and evaluation committee to assess the extent to which the dialogue framework is serving its purpose and recommend necessary remedial measures. That was the major thing of the day.”

Justice Nare said it was agreed that the committees would meet next Friday, March 1, after which they would give a report back on March 8, 2019.He said some people were of the opinion that the meeting should have dealt with the modalities of the meeting, but the parties settled on forming committees that would then deal with the issue of modalities.Sources who attended the meeting said Mr Daniel Shumba sought to disrupting the proceedings, before he later walked out.“He was playing some theatrics to seek attention and he later walked out of the meeting,” said the source. “It was clear from the beginning that he wanted to be a spoiler.”Commenting on the decision by Mr Shumba to walk out of the meeting, Presidential spokesperson Mr George Charamba said: “It is his democratic right to walk away from progress.”Zanu-PF secretary for Legal Affairs Cde Munyaradzi Paul Mangwana and MDC-T vice president Mr Obert Gutu confirmed that they had a progressive meeting.

The dialogue is part of an expansive berth that President Mnangagwa has given to engage all stakeholders, including the Church and civil society, to confront the national question. Herald